


It's Kind of a Fucked Up Story

by lesbrarians



Series: A Fucked Up Story [1]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alcohol, Blood, F/M, Multishep Universe, Renegade Shepard (Mass Effect), Xenophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-23 19:44:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19708144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbrarians/pseuds/lesbrarians
Summary: Ai Shepard’s not entirely sure how she went from looking for a place where she could be alone to drinking with Javik, especially considering her hatred of everyone on the Normandy and her general distaste for aliens. This takes place in a MultiShep universe, where four Shepards coexist on the Normandy and everyone’s alive, but the vast majority of this fic is just between Javik and Ai, who discover that they are more alike than they thought.





	It's Kind of a Fucked Up Story

Ai Shepard wasn’t fond of animals, generally speaking. They lacked the intelligence of humans, and they demanded _attention_ and were so unflinchingly _happy_ all the time. As someone who had very strong issues with other people touching her, she hated animals that felt the need to invade her personal space.

Which was why she was okay with cats, but only if they were the aloof sort who shied away from interacting with others, much like herself.

It was late in the evening as she prowled the Normandy like a cat on the hunt, although she had no prey in mind that night. She was fed up with social interactions in general and just wanted a quiet place where she could be alone, but everyone else was making that very difficult. When she went to lurk in her usual haunt in the belly of the ship, she found it already occupied by engineers Donnelly and Daniels, who were too engaged to notice her silently glaring at them in displeasure.

Disgruntled at the loss of her usual quiet place, she returned to the crew deck with the intent of going back to her room in Life Support, but her skin prickled in annoyance at the sound of loud voices emanating from the port observation room. She enjoyed her place of residence because of all of its machinery, which she occasionally tampered with for fun, and because she found it ironic. However, she hated its proximity to the lounge for precisely this reason. It was obvious that a gaggle of crew members were drinking together, and she was pretty sure she could guess who it was.

“You’ve never heard this story?” Ai recognized the voice right away, although the slightly drunk slur to it would have tipped her off even if its brashness didn’t.

“I think I speak for us all when I say that we’ve _all_ heard this story.” Ai’s lip curled at the sound of the turian’s phlanged voice. She still thought there were too many aliens on board the Normandy, and turians were her least favorite of them all, with all their _law_ and _order_. Javik was the only one she could stand to be around for more than five seconds, and that was only because he was as equally disgusted by everyone else as she was.

“I haven’t!” The only voice that she could mildly tolerate, Sam’s, piped up.

“Baby, no,” Vega began, but K. was already barreling onward.

“Hollywood hasn’t!” she protested. “James. Gonna need your assistance.”

“Dios mio…” Vega was groaning as Ai stepped in front of the doorway to watch the scene unfold. The redhead was on her feet, gripping her drink with one hand and gesturing wildly at Garrus, Tiffany, Liara, James, and Sam with the other. They were gathered around the poker table, which was littered with empty beer bottles and a half-finished game of cards. Ai didn’t care enough to listen to the story that was being told, instead eyeing the bottle of vodka on the bar. She didn’t drink much in general, preferring to keep her senses sharp at all times, but tonight she felt like forgetting the stupidity of everyone else on this ship. Everyone’s eyes were on K. as she regaled the crew with her favorite tale of her exploits in the field, and Ai took the opportunity to slip in and confiscate the alcohol.

“So there I am, a brute on either side of me, I roll to the right and I _punch_ one of them—” She punctuated the statement by socking Vega in the arm as a demonstration.

“Whoa, easy there, Bruiser,” James said, wincing as he rubbed his arm. “Why am I always the Brute?”

K. snickered, sloshing some of her drink out of her cup as she slung a friendly arm around his shoulders. “Why _not_?” she began, but the words died on her lips when she happened to glance across the room and see Ai standing there, staring at her with dead, red eyes that burned as bright as coals.

The group collectively turned to find the source of the disturbance. No one really knew how to react, except for Sam, who beamed at her as if there was nothing odd about her sudden appearance.

“Oh, hello, Ai,” Liara finally said in an attempt to be diplomatic. Ai didn’t answer – asari weren’t worth her words – but made eye contact with her, not blinking until Liara looked away, clearly uncomfortable. That gave her a small thrill of satisfaction; she enjoyed knowing that she was the source of everyone’s discomfiture.

“Ai, come join us! We have mimosas. And beer!” Sam called, swirling her drink invitingly, and there was a sharp intake of breath as K. and Tiffany both turned their heads to look at her, as if to say _Are you out of your mind, no, don’t_ invite _her!_

Ai shifted her glowing gaze to Sam, blinking once as she turned the idea over in her head. On the one hand, it would be amusing to ruin the others’ night, and she did have a certain kinship with Sam, having seen her on the battlefield. She knew that K. could be merciless and had no problem executing people whom she felt deserved it, but Ai found her personality obnoxious and she was too interested in “the greater good” to be a true kindred spirit. Tiffany was too much of a goody-two-shoes for her to tolerate; Ai had no use for a peacemaker in her life. Of the three of them, Sam was the only one who could disconnect from reality —from those pesky _morals_ —long enough to slaughter innocents, which was Ai’s favorite pastime.

But not even that shared connection could convince her to tolerate everyone else’s presence for the night. She needed to distance herself from _people_.

“No,” was all she said, and she picked up the bottle of alcohol and walked out of the room, not sparing the others a single glance.

She could hear the relieved muttering behind her (and a distinct, disappointed, “That was supposed to be my nightcap.” “Go ask for it back, then.” “Hell, no. You think I have a death wish?”), but she tuned it all out. She had better places to be.

Like the engineering deck. At this point, it was late enough that the engineers had retired to the crew room, which suited her just fine. Donnelly had a nasty habit of pissing her off, and while she could tolerate Daniels and had had a number of technical, reasonably civil conversations with Adams in the past, she wasn’t exceptionally interested in spending time with them. She wanted to be alone, surrounded by machinery, where she could practice spawning combat drones and use alcohol to numb herself against the saccharine aura of love and camaraderie that permeated the ship.

But it looked like fate had other plans for her that night. Her ears pricked up at the sound of a door sliding open, and she went stock still, slowly turning her head to see who dared to disturb her.

Two sets of eyes blinked back at her, surveying her with equal disdain. Ai had forgotten that Javik’s preferred quarters were on this level—she didn’t care enough about any of the ship’s many residents to keep track of where they all slept.

“You. Human. What are you doing down here?” he asked, his accented voice as blunt as ever.

“Attempting to be alone.” Ai stared at him, her usually hollow eyes growing sharp.

The Prothean may have considered himself to be far more intelligent than the races that surrounded him, but if he comprehended Ai’s pointed statement, it wasn’t obvious. Or perhaps he did catch her drift entirely and was simply electing to ignore it – she was technically in his territory, after all.

“It’s not often that I get visitors at this hour. Everyone else tends to be rotting out their already limited brain cells by now.”

“I wasn’t visiting. But yes, I prefer not to socialize with those…” She stopped, scanning her brain for a word derisive enough to express her contempt for her crewmates.

“Primitives?” Javik suggested, and Ai very nearly cracked a small smile at that.

Instead, she kept her face impassive and answered, “Yes. Indeed.”

“Then we share something in common, human.”

“Let’s hope that’s all we have in common… alien. Hatred of the imbeciles or not, you’re just as inferior as the rest of them.”

She could see the distaste on Javik’s face, and it gave her a small flash of satisfaction.

“Allow me to prove you wrong,” he said, matching her biting chill word for word. Two of his eyes flicked down to the bottle of liquor while the other set maintained impressive eye contact.

“You won’t,” she told him by way of agreement. She didn’t follow him into the port cargo room, instead heading for the engineering sub-deck. It was her favorite lair – there was just something satisfying about surrounding herself with wiring and the inner workings of the ship.

“Did your species consume alcohol?” It was a question, but the flatness of her voice made it barely recognizable as one.

“No.”

“Drink this anyway.” She unscrewed the cap, which functioned as a makeshift glass, from the drink cylinder, and poured him a drink. “I don’t care if it’s toxic to your kind or not. I intend to imbibe, and only a fool lowers their inhibitions around a sober individual.”

“Which is precisely why Protheans didn’t drink.” Javik took the glass from Ai, who sat down on the bench that once served as Jack’s bed before taking a long draught straight from the bottle (she wouldn’t share a glass with an alien if it was the last thing she did). It was rare that she turned to alcohol, but the burning sensation in the back of her throat reminded her of the real reason why she opted to drink – not to have fun, or to forget, or simply to cope, but to feel that burn. It reminded her that she was alive.

“I’m only agreeing to this because we’re…” He searched for a word, clearly reluctant to use the term ‘allies.’ “Not enemies,” he finally finished, sitting down on a crate opposite from her and taking a sip of the drink.

“Just because we’re serving together doesn’t mean you’re not my enemy. You’re not human.”

“Neither are you,” Javik replied, and those double-pupiled eyes bored straight into her soul. Ai glowered at him, certain he was making a jibe about her lack of empathy, morals, and basic human emotions. “You’re more machine than human at this point. Have you looked in a mirror recently?”

The pieces clicked together in her head, and Ai reached a hand to her face, brushing her fingers across the gaping cracks in her skin. The recesses of her eye sockets were as black as soot, the original dark brown of her irises so decomposed that the only color in her eyes was the red glow of synthetics. The cybernetic implants were glaringly obvious, her humanity literally flaking away.

“I might enjoy my cybernetics, but I’m not ruled by machinery. I still have an organic brain and heart.”

“That is debatable.” Ai couldn’t argue with that. She _had_ been called heartless before. Javik held out his glass for a refill. “This is a tasty beverage. I approve.”

“It’s warm vodka. It tastes like battery acid.” In spite of that, she unflinchingly downed another shot-sized gulp of alcohol. It still stung a little, but that was quickly followed by a warm sensation that spread throughout her chest.

“To you, maybe.”

Ai narrowed her eyes at him, not entirely sure whether he was serious or not. She supposed it made sense that alien taste buds were different from human ones. “Fine. But I don’t drink it for the taste. I drink it for the way it makes me feel. Also so that I can forget how I am surrounded by idiots.”

“They _are_ idiots,” Javik agreed, and there was a shared moment of understanding between the two of them. It was refreshing to have someone so readily agree with their distaste for others, and Ai supposed she could appreciate the comradeship, as long as it was in small doses.

The only problem was, she had no idea how to carry on an actual conversation with anyone for longer than thirty seconds. She never was one for small talk – even when she was a squad leader on Torfan, she only spoke to give orders. One nervous new marine had the gall to ask for a few words of encouragement before she sent him to a brutal and unnecessary death, and she simply stared wordlessly at him, the idea of such a thing laughable to her (her CO, Major Kyle, stepped in and gave him a pep talk. Sometimes she wondered whether it gave him hope in the last few moments before his death).

Now, she grasped at the only thing she knew she had in common with Javik and said, “We should make use of the garbage compactor and eject them out the airlock.”

Javik rolled his eyes. “Finally. Someone who understands.”

“Believe me, I understand. If I had my way, I wouldn’t be working with any of them.”

“I would be ruling them. Another.”

Ai passed the bottle over to Javik. “You would have to share with me,” she told him. “I don’t let people control me.” It was true, she was a contrary person by nature and detested the thought of anyone wielding power over her. When given orders (“Keep your squad safe out there, soldier”), she deliberately disobeyed them to give herself more leverage.

Javik surveyed her, considering the prospect. “I suppose you could rule some of the less desirable clusters.”

Ai narrowed her eyes, and the action made her look more menacing than ever. “No,” she said bluntly, putting down the vodka and leaning forward to have her say.

They debated the theoretic outcomes of this hypothetical joint rule of the galaxy for an obscene amount of time, drinking their way to the bottom of the bottle in the process.

“You can have the Citadel,” Ai said as she finished the last of the vodka, actively working to keep a slur out of her voice, “in exchange for the Terminus Systems.” After polishing off the rest of the alcohol in record time, she was _definitely_ drunk. She didn’t drink much to begin with, and _certainly_ not socially.

Javik scoffed. “Take it. The scum of this cycle inhabits it, anyway. Not your best trade.”

Ai raised one thin eyebrow and met his gaze. “Really? Every slaver, pirate, and crook in the galaxy would be under my control. Think about it.”

Javik hummed from somewhere in the back of his throat. “I see.”

The corner of Ai’s mouth twitched up in the barest, briefest glimpse of a smile, and she sat back, still not breaking eye contact. She considered it a sign of weakness, and besides, most people couldn’t stand to stare into her demonic, corpse-like eyes for too long.

But it appeared that Javik was proving to be an exception to this rule, because he wasn’t backing down from the challenge so easily.

“Your fondness for staring contests is almost Prothean,” he commented after a few moments of silent, sustained eye contact.

Ai let out a small noise of revulsion. “Don’t,” she told him. “Don’t compare me to your kind.” She flicked her gaze up to his second set of eyes. _Aliens_.

“Did you know that female Protheans could engage in foreplay using only their eyes?”

That was enough to make Ai cave, looking down in disgust.

“That, right there, that. Was very suggestive.”

Ai kneaded the center of her forehead, beginning to regret her life choices. She shouldn’t have taken the bait, she should have just ignored Javik and gone to drink her alcohol in peace. Alone. “No. It wasn’t,” she said, a note of finality in her voice that clearly said _shut up and change the subject_.

“I would like to touch you,” Javik announced, and Ai raised her head so quickly she feared that she got whiplash.

“In your dreams, you sick freak,” she sneered.

The look Javik gave her in response was one of the utmost pity and condescension, and it set off a spark of anger inside her. “Not in that sense. I want to—you should let me read you.”

“Why.” While she was glad she had misunderstood Javik’s intentions, touching a Prothean at all was still a little too personal for her tastes.

“Your signals aren’t like anyone else’s on this ship. Also because I feel like it.”

If she hadn’t been as equally shit-faced as Javik clearly was at the moment, she would have said no without a second thought. As it was, who was she to deny the inebriated Prothean his drunken desire.

“Make it quick.” She held out her hand, involuntarily shuddering when his three, cool fingers wrapped around her own. It wasn’t even strictly because he was an alien (although she’d be lying if she said that wasn’t part of it – she had gotten _marginally_ more tolerant of aliens after being forced to serve with them, but she was still revolted by the vast majority of other species); she wasn’t used to being touched by anyone, period.

Javik tapped into his sensory ability, and Ai could practically see his mind clear up. Maybe that was why he so badly wanted to read her, to connect with someone and form some clarity out of the drunken fog that was clouding his brain. Ai stared at him suspiciously, not sure what kind of information he was going to glean from her.

“I sense… apathy. Overwhelmingly so. Traces of anger. And sadness.”

Well, the first part was correct, but she was detecting bullshit with the latter statement. “I’ve never been sad a day in my life.”

“I didn’t say it was your sadness.” That drew Ai up short for a moment and she blinked at him, unwilling to vocalize her confusion. “Everything you do is an attempt to feel something, isn’t it?” he asked her.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Even her words sounded hollow.

“I think you do. You kill because—”

“—it makes me happy,” she finished, cutting him off. “Just for a few seconds.” She was decidedly not in her right mind now, because if she had been, she would have ended that train of thought right there.

“No wonder they call you the Butcher of Torfan.”

Ai lifted her chin proudly at that. “I did my duty.” It wasn’t a name she was ashamed of. She was never bothered by the number of Marine lives lost that raid. She had wiped out every batarian on Torfan, even the ones who had surrendered and were begging for their lives, and that was exactly what she had set out to do. As far as the Alliance was concerned, she was a goddamn hero for eradicating the ones responsible for the Skyllian Blitz, even if she _did_ ignore her CO and sent three-quarters of her squad to their deaths (sometimes she laid awake at night. Not because she felt guilty, but because she wished she could have gotten the rest of the lot killed. She hated leaving business unfinished, and uneven numbers bothered her). Sure, she didn’t have the Star of Terra like Tiffany did, but there was a flame burning in her name on Torfan, and the entire batarian race hated her, which was good enough for her.

“You eliminated the enemy entirely. In my cycle, you would have been commended.”

“Good.” It was nice to know there was a time and a place where she would have been appreciated.

“It’s intriguing, though. Your more bizarre behavior makes sense now.” Ai opened her mouth to debate the point (there was nothing bizarre about the way she behaved, what was he _talking_ about), but before she could get the words out, Javik was sharing memories with her on a mental plane: the time they had a mission on a freezing, icy planet, and she had refused to wear a helmet, preferring to feel the physical pain of the biting cold against her cracked face. The time she had agreed to watch an old chick flick with Sam in the hopes that maybe the more dramatic moments of the romcom would stir some semblance of emotion inside her. The time she’d hacked into everyone’s datapads to redirect their messages to the wrong people (that one actually had worked somewhat, reassuring her that she could occasionally feel a mild form of humor through practical jokes at everyone else’s expense).

Just as suddenly as the memories came, they vanished. Ai’s mind was reeling from the memories that had flashed in front of her eyes. She felt violated, like the one time Liara had melded with her – her mind was supposed to belong to her and her alone, and she hated the thought of someone else poking around in it.

“But perhaps we aren’t so similar after all.” Ai didn’t bother to ask why, knowing that he would answer the question soon enough. “I am anger and Vengeance. You are nothing.”

It wasn’t said as an insult but as a statement of fact, and even Ai couldn’t deny it. For the first time, someone saw how empty she was inside. It wasn’t so much that there was a hole in her heart that needed filling, as it was that it never quite existed. There were swathes of her childhood that she couldn’t remember, but what she did recall was just as emotionless as her life now.

And for one single, fleeting instant, Ai felt something that she had never felt before – fear.

She ripped her hand away from Javik, severing the psychometric connection. “If you come near me again,” she threatened, “I will rip off your malformed alien genitalia and force feed it into your protesting mouth.” She _dared_ Javik to tell her she couldn’t feel anger.

If he was surprised by the outburst, Javik didn’t show it. With the mental connection between them broken, he was back to looking thoroughly inebriated. “I didn’t,” he began, grasping for words that eluded him. “Malformed genitals. I don’t have them.”

“I don’t care. They’re still hideous.”

“How would you know? I’ve been the only Prothean in the last 50,000 years.”

“You’re an alien. And really old. They’re disgusting.”

Javik looked positively wounded, deeply offended that she would insinuate that any part of his anatomy wasn’t godlike. “My genitals are the pinnacle of perfection.”

This, Ai found amusing. “Prove it,” she heard herself saying, then immediately regretted it. She didn’t know where that came from (that was a lie, she knew it was the alcohol talking. Had she been sober, none of this would be happening).

Javik stared at her, the cogs in his head turning, but his pride won out and he reached for the plates that covered his pelvis.

Apparently this was really happening. Ai turned around, boring a hole in the wall with her gaze. It wasn’t so much to give him privacy, as to put herself more at ease. This was not the way she had pictured her night going.

“The last time I saw a male’s genitalia, I broke it. And also stabbed him in the testicles,” she commented.

“Was it unsolicited?” The question was punctuated with a clatter as another piece of armor hit the floor.

“Yes,” she said, casting her mind back to the incident in question. She was still living on Earth in one of the megatropolises of Japan, and she’d had the misfortune of being flashed by a creep in the dark alley she called home. Something had snapped inside of her that day, causing her to react viscerally. She’d lunged forward without hesitation, jamming a red hot omni-blade into his balls and fracturing his penis with one sharp crack. She still considered it to be one of her finest feats to date.

“Good. In my cycle, unwanted sexual conduct was punishable with public genital mutilation.”

A smirk flashed across Ai’s face. “Without anesthesia, I hope.”

“What is that?”

“Exactly.”

There was a final clank and some shuffling, and when Ai got the impression that he had settled himself, she turned around.

She had expected Javik to be alien in appearance underneath all that armor, but the xenophobe in her still flinched at the sight. He was all sharp lines and rough plating, the angles of his body jutting out unnaturally. His linea alba was a deep gouge that mirrored the split in his chin, cutting a thick line down the center of his abdomen. Chitinous plates overlapped where the abdominal muscles would exist on a human, and the same red corded sinew that lined the underside his throat curved down his sides.

As she surveyed him with a cold, clinical detachment, Ai’s eyes flicked down to what she assumed was the Prothean equivalent of a phallus, although the similarities stopped at “vaguely cylindrical meat tube.” It was too slender to be comparable to human anatomy, if its concentric, collapsing sections weren’t already a dead giveaway that it wasn’t from this world. Slim, undulatory flagella extended from the same slit that the shaft protruded out of, and sharp, curved hooks flanked either side of it.

Its utterly alien nature kept Ai from mentally connecting it with any kind of sexual organ (which was probably a good thing, given her previous history with such things); she felt like she was observing some kind of deep sea creature instead, and the potentially lethal nature of the hooks made her want to study it further.

Not really thinking about what she was doing, Ai slipped off the bench to kneel on the floor and examine them.

Sniggering, Javik muttered, “I do like the sight of primitives on their knees.”

If she had been in full possession of her mental faculties, Ai would have reacted with complete lack of amusement, staring judgmentally before walking away, as she so often did. But as it was, she was inebriated and considerably less collected than usual.

“Shut up,” she hissed, lashing out and grabbing him by the junk. It was harder and smoother than any piece of human anatomy, as if it was covered by an exoskeleton, and its telescopic nature disturbed her. But still, despite its differences, it would be easy, so easy, to recreate her last encounter with a man’s genitalia, just _yank_ hard to one side and listen for the snap that indicated her success. She was tempted to do so immediately, but opted for a threatening squeeze instead, intending it to be a warning, a message that said that if she wanted to, she could so thoroughly leave him permanently damaged. She wasn’t expecting the hitch in Javik’s breath or the unconscious curl of his fingers, and in that moment, she realized that she had made a grave mistake.

Whatever reaction that motion had provoked, she was _definitely_ caught off guard when the hooks at the base of his shaft latched onto her hand, pricking just beneath the skin’s surface. The pain was sharp and stabbing, like the puncture of a needle, but it wasn’t entirely unpleasant. Ai might have been one of the most sadistic and remorseless individuals to exist, but there was a small part of her being that welcomed pain herself. It was something she could _feel_. There were so many intangible feelings eluding her that she appreciated any physical sensation that provided her with something other than emptiness.

“Why is it doing that,” she demanded to know.

“They’re claspers. It is how we connect to the female.”

If Ai hadn’t already been disgusted by sex, the thought of twin hooks clasping onto a vulva would have instantly repulsed her from the very concept. “That is revolting,” she told him. “And you call _us_ primitives. You disgust me.”

“You lie.” Ai scowled at him, despising his sensory powers. It was true that she wasn’t entirely disgusted by him – there was mostly apathy, since her brain was having difficulty associating the foreign sight with genitalia. In a bizarre way, she would have been more disgusted if it had been a human dick.

“Then how does human sex work?” Javik continued.

There was a lengthy pause before Ai spoke again, her affect as flat as ever. “I don’t know.”

“You have never mated with anyone?”

“And I never will.” She tightened her hold further, causing Javik to let out a ragged gasp and grab her arm. His claws pierced the fabric of her dress blues, fingernails digging into the skin of her forearm.

Ai closed her eyes, drawing in a shuddery intake of breath. She had never felt as alive as she did right now, with her nerve endings screaming in glorious pain. Even when she wasn’t drunk out of her skull, she spent so much time in a disembodied state of mind, disassociated from the world around her. But this was _real_. Her body was more than a puppet, a useless meatsack, it existed on a plane of reality and this physical sensation was actually happening. The pain grounded her. It wasn’t emotion, but it was _something_ , and she could _feel it_ and that was _good_.

As she relaxed her death grip, Javik eased his claws out of her skin and the pain receded to a pulsing throb. It gave her a theory, and she tried squeezing again to see if he would react as predicted. The intoxication prevented her from holding in a hiss as his fingernails sank back into her flesh, the dull ache sharpening once more.

When she loosened her grasp, Javik’s clench on her arm slackened, and when she tightened it, the tension returned and brought pain with it. Ai could work with that.

She fell into a rhythm, using Javik as a conduit for her own physical sensation, to derive pleasure out of pain. On some level, she understood that she must have been simulating Prothean sex, but she wasn’t even remotely focused on what this was doing to Javik. She didn’t notice the way his length extended, or the writhing of the flagella trapped beneath her hand, or even the faint noise Javik made that signaled that he was close to hitting his peak. It was only when the hooks that had buried themselves into her hand clamped down further that she became conscious of what was happening. Her eyes flew open (she didn’t even know when she had closed them) as Javik came with a shudder, dragging his claws down the length of her arm and slicing open her sleeve. Ai unwillingly let out a gasp as the lacerations tore open her arm, sending tendrils of pain radiating outward.

The hooks eased out of her skin as Javik relaxed, and Ai pulled away as if she’d been burned. The sober, logical part of her brain was horrified at what just transpired, but the drunken, overpowering part was still relishing in its physical effects.

She turned her back, pulling up the sleeve of her left arm to assess the damage. Thin rivulets of blood dripped down her arm, and she trailed one finger up her arm to stop them before they leaked onto the floor. Every now and then, it was nice to have the reminder that she could still bleed red. She was still human.

She could hear Javik stretch out behind her. “It turns out there is one thing primitives are good at,” he commented, the arrogance back in his voice.

“Not. A. Word,” Ai replied through gritted teeth, the remark raising her hackles. She suddenly wanted him gone, hating how weak the entire night had turned her.

She whipped around to face him. “Get out,” she said tersely.

“What?” Javik’s reaction was delayed, his reflexes dulled by alcohol and the post-orgasmic haze.

Ai didn’t have time for him to get his bearings together; she wanted –no, needed to be alone _now_. She grabbed the neck of the empty vodka bottle and smashed it against the wall, shattering the glass with a loud _crash_. She was (foolishly, stupidly) not wearing her battle-ready omni-tool, but without access to incendiary powers, this would have to do. In one swift movement, she jammed the makeshift shank against Javik’s throat and repeated herself, her voice dangerously quiet. “ _Get out_.”

Javik bristled under knifepoint, but even the proudest of Protheans could realize that he was in no state to press the issue. “Fine,” he spat, and she held position for a few seconds before backing off, still clutching the jagged bottleneck in her hand. She had the distinct impression that she had just made an enemy out of the one person who had ever understood her, but she found herself once again not caring. The sudden flare-up of emotion had vanished as quickly as it came.

Javik fumed silently as he put his armor back on, buckling each piece with haphazard, drunken abandon. He was still extremely wasted, and it showed as he stumbled up the stairs to retreat to the solitude of the port cargo hold. Ai didn’t want to think about their next interaction when he was sobered up.

Finally, after spending the better part of the night attempting to avoid social interactions, she was alone with just the dull throbbing of her arm to keep her company. She took off her dress jacket to get a better look at the gouges, throwing the article of clothing to the ground. She was grateful for the privacy now; she never bared her arms around the others. When she wasn’t wearing her Alliance blues, her casual clothing was long-sleeved, black as her soul, and as red as the blood of her enemies. She didn’t want nosy people questioning her about her scars, the literal hundreds of tally marks she burned into her skin with the tip of a searing hot omni-blade. She was proud of every notch, each one of them commemorating a life she took, but she didn’t feel like explaining them to the others. For now, however, the tank top would have to suffice because she was not in the mood to further bloody up her ruined jacket, and besides, the alcohol was making her hot.

Ai picked herself up off of the floor and immediately lost her balance, stumbling into a stack of crates. She swiftly corrected herself, glancing around to make sure no one saw her rare moment of discomposure (she knew no one was else was around, but that didn’t prevent her from confirming).

She hadn’t realized just how drunk she really was until that moment, when she got to her feet and found the world spinning. Climbing the stairs became as impossible a feat as scaling Mount Everest, but she was determined to manage. She gripped the guardrail and edged her way up one step at a time, feeling out the terrain of the stairs with the toe of her boot.

She had no idea how long it took her to reach the top of the stairwell, but when she did, it was, to her mind, her greatest accomplishment to date. She inhaled and slowly released her breath, taking a moment to regain her composure. When she was satisfied that she appeared reasonably sober, she pulled up her omni-tool’s specially modded messaging feature, using the haptic adaptive interface to compose a message. She didn’t have to worry about the gloves normally needed to operate a haptic interface; she was accustomed to going bareskin, having gotten cybernetic enhancement surgery at least ten years ago to have accelerometers implanted in her fingertips.

She painstakingly typed out a message addressed to Sam, taking care to spell each word properly even in her inebriated stated, although she was willing to forgo her usual proper capitalization. She didn’t have the capacity to capitalize letters at the moment.

“something may have occurred with javik. i need to speak to you.” She paused and added, “immediately.” She pressed send, sealing her fate.

All she had to do was wait and hope that Sam responded quickly, because she was horrified over what had happened and, for once in her life, needed advice.


End file.
